One of these early antiphonaries exists, a MS. of the eleventh century belonging to the church of S. Martial. Among many wholly unobjectionable hymns occurs a ballad of the tale of Judith; another is frankly an invocation to the nightingale, a springtide song; a third is a dialogue between a lover and his lass.
It is in the ecclesiastical hymns, religious lessons, and legends couched in the form of ballads, coming into use in the eighth and ninth centuries, that we have the germs, the rudiments, of a new literature; not only so, but also the introduction of formal music gradually displacing music that is recitative.
Of melodies there are two kinds, the first used as a handmaid to poetry; in it there is nothing formal. A musical phrase may be repeated or may not, as required to give force to the words employed. This was the music of the Greek and Roman theatre. The lyrics of Horace and Tibullus could be sung to no other. This, and this alone, was the music adopted by the Church, and which we have still in the Nicene Creed, Gloria, Sanctus, and Pater Noster. But this never could have been the music of the people—it could not be used by soldiers to march to, nor by the peasants as dance tunes.
Did rhythmic music exist among the ancients side by side with recitative? Almost certainly it did, utterly despised by the cultured.
When Julius Cæsar was celebrating his triumph at Rome after his Gaulish victories, we are informed that the soldiery marched singing out:—
“Gallias Cæsar subegit Mithridates Cæsarem. Ecce Cæsar nunc triumphat, Qui subegit Gallias, Nicomedes non triumphat, Qui subegit Cæsarem.”
This must have been sung to a formal melody, to which the soldiers tramped in time.
So also Cæsar, in B.C. 49, like a liberal-minded man, desired to admit the principal men of Cisalpine Gaul into the Senate. This roused Roman prejudice and mockery. Prejudice, because the Gauls were esteemed barbarians; mockery, because of their peculiar costume—their baggy trousers. So the Roman rabble composed and sang verses, “_illa vulgo canebantur_.” These may be rendered in the same metre:—
“Cæsar led the Gauls in triumph, Then to Senate-house admits. First must they pull off their trousers, Ere the laticlavus fits.”